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Optical FW/SW Engineer – Tech Lead

Astera Labs

San Jose, CA, US$160k – $200konsite

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About this role

Astera Labs (NASDAQ: ALAB) provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. By collaborating with hyperscalers and ecosystem partners, Astera Labs enables organizations to unlock the full potential of modern AI. Astera Labs’ Intelligent Connectivity Platform integrates CXL®, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe®, and UALink™ semiconductor-based technologies with the company’s COSMOS software suite to unify diverse components into cohesive, flexible systems that deliver end-to-end scale-up, and scale-out connectivity. The company’s custom connectivity solutions business complements its standards-based portfolio, enabling customers to deploy tailored architectures to meet their unique infrastructure requirements. Discover more at www.asteralabs.com .

Role Overview

We are looking for an Optical FW/SW Engineer, Tech Lead for design, development, and validation of embedded firmware and supporting software for Astera Labs’ next-generation optical products. You will build software for optical engines, optical modules, and emerging near-packaged optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions, spanning real-time control, calibration, telemetry, diagnostics, and high-speed link optimization.

This role sits at the intersection of embedded systems, optics, and hardware. You will own critical technical problems from architecture through silicon and hardware bring-up to production readiness, partnering with optical, electrical, DSP, systems, and manufacturing teams. Your work will help enable reliable, scalable connectivity for rack-scale AI infrastructure as Astera Labs advances the transition to higher-bandwidth optical interconnects.

Key Responsibilities

• Optical Firmware Architecture and Development

• Architect, develop, optimize, and maintain production-quality embedded firmware for optical engines, PIC/EIC platforms, and optical modules.

• Implement software in C on embedded processors using bare-metal or RTOS-based designs.

• Develop Python scripts and tools for unit-testing, configuration, automation, characterization, manufacturing test, and data analysis.

• Optical Control and Performance Optimization

• Develop control algorithms for modulator operation, automatic power control, temperature compensation, calibration, and link adaptation.

• Implement telemetry, diagnostics, monitoring, and fault-handling features that improve optical-link health, reliability, and serviceability.

• Optimize firmware for latency, power efficiency, control stability, and performance across evolving optical architectures.

• Hardware Bring-Up, Product Validation, and Quality

• Lead firmware and hardware bring-up, including board initialization, peripheral integration, lab debugging, and root-cause analysis.

• Integrate firmware with photodetectors, TIAs, ADCs, DACs, sensors, drivers, DSPs, and hardware control interfaces such as I2C and SPI.

• Partner with optical, electrical, DSP, systems, and validation teams to characterize, tune, and qualify optical products.

• Establish unit-testing strategies and maintain automated tests that improve firmware quality, coverage, and release confidence.

• Apply disciplined version-control, code-review, documentation, and release practices throughout the development lifecycle.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related technical field.

• 5–8 years of experience developing embedded firmware or software for optical, photonics, communications, semiconductor, or other high-reliability products.

• Strong programming skills in C and Python, with experience developing software for microcontroller platforms.

• Experience with RTOS-based embedded development, embedded programming methods, hardware interfaces, and low-level device control.

• Proven experience with unit testing, version control, debugging, and hardware bring-up.

• Ability to analyze and resolve complex problems across firmware, hardware, optical control algorithms, and system-level behavior.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with optical module management, CMIS, telemetry, diagnostics, or control requirements.

• Experience with optical engines, pluggable optics, silicon photonics, PIC/EIC integration, NPO, or CPO.

• Knowledge of lasers, modulators, photodetectors, TIAs, thermal tuning, wavelength control, calibration, and high-speed optical link behavior.

• Familiarity with JTAG, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, optical test equipment, and protocol analyzers.

• Demonstrated technical leadership, strong cross-functional collaboration, and the ability to drive an ambiguous problem from concept to production.

Salary range is $160,000 to $200,000 depending on experience, level, and business need. This role may be eligible for discretionary bonus, incentives and benefits.

We know that creativity and innovation happen more often when teams include diverse ideas, backgrounds, and experiences, and we actively encourage everyone with relevant experience to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people, veterans, parents, and individuals with disabilities.

Salary insight

The midpoint of this range ($180k) is about 10% below the median disclosed salary for San Francisco roles listed on ForgeApply ($200k across 8,476 jobs).

Based on live postings with disclosed pay on ForgeApply; refreshed daily. Not an estimate of this employer's offer.

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